


The Crane Wife

by Trebia



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, House of Finwë - Freeform, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:59:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trebia/pseuds/Trebia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lalwen, on sailing east, had more history to her than most would recall.</p><p>Or, if you will, why Thranduil was so bent on those gems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crane Wife

**Author's Note:**

> I'm playing fast and loose with canon by taking a canon character and making her the canon-wife as it suits me since the canon-wife ain't numbered among us. DAMNIT, TOLKIEN.
> 
> I really hate that virtually nothing was done with Lalwen after she'd gone east in The Shibboleth of Fëanor. This is my take on what might've been.
> 
> This started off as a writing exercise into Tolkien's heavier lore and ended up having a life of its own. Read at your own peril, purists!

i. The music is strong in Finwë’s last daughter. She slips into the world from her Vanyar mother, fair Indis, with all her golden coloring during the Noontide of Valinor. Her name is Írimë, called Lalwendë for the Quenya by her mother and Írien by her father, Finwë-king. The ages will come to know her as Lalwen.

ii. She does not fit here, this last daughter. The gloom-weaver and the first evil who desired dominion over all things drain the light from the Two Trees and steal the crafted light of the Simarils her father-son, Fëanor, had wrought. Lalwen refuses the call of the Valar.

In the tumult that follows, oaths are sworn over her father’s death and her father-son raises a great rallying cry as he claims kingship over her people. Her brothers both caution against this folly, but their blood calls them both east. Finarfin’s daughter, called Nerwen now after growing out of her mother-name Artanis, lingers near Lalwen as Finarfin cautions his siblings of the follies that might follow if they give chase.

“I will go,” says Nerwen, but it is too low for others save for Lalwen to hear. She reaches for her brother-daughter’s slender hands and takes them into her own.

iii. They cross the grinding ice of the Helcaraxë soon after Fëanor burns the blood-priced ships, hands clutching one another’s cloaks so as to not lose their way in the snow-blinded cold. A burning hatred for her father-son builds in her breast, and she can see Fingolfin holds that same fire within himself for Fëanor.

During their moments of rest, she and the few women that have chosen this path huddle together under the wailing wind and sing prayers for the dead. Nerwen casts her mind out at her often, and Lalwen presses her own presence back against it like a comforting brace of wind for the younger maid.

iv. The earth beneath her boots sings with the songs of creation by the Valar. They are in the lands where they were first awoken and are witness to the ruin of her father-son’s host. It is said that his body incinerated in ashes with the departure of his fiery spirit after he succumbed to his wounds delivered by Morgoth’s minion, Gothmog.

Lalwen maintains that his body simply couldn’t handle all of that anger after a time and quit this earth in a blaze of fire out of frustration for its host. She never bore her father-son any great love.

v. She comes to hate Orcs almost as deeply as she had hated her father-son after felling many in the Dagor Aglarab. The Siege of Angband begins and Lalwen settles with Fingolfin to wait out nearly four hundred years.

vi. When the siege is quiet, she spends time amongst the forests of Beleriand. From Brethil to Neldoreth, then to Region where she has climbed and spoken with many a tree. Roan, oak, spruce and strong yew each has a theme of their own that Manwë’s wind coaxes from their leaves in the eventide. She cannot count the years spent there.

At times, her eyes play tricks upon her. She fancies the sight of Yavanna’s train trailing around the gnarled roots of a beech tree, or of the call of Oromë's horn far off — even the faces of flowers bear some scrutiny as just having opened for Vána’s passing.

Always there is Ulmo burbling in the creekbed, or on the leaves of dew in the morning tide. Varda’s mantle, called Elbereth by Lalwen’s folk, hangs over her in the night. The Valar’s song is everywhere, assuring Lalwen that this new land is not so new at all.

vii. The Dagor Bragollach brings them lower. The Men and their House of Bëor is virtually destroyed. She can barely lift herself from her sickbed after the wounds she sustains, her bow broken into shards and discarded on the field of battle.

She remembers the Balrogs until her end days — the sharp smell of brimstone and the lash of their whips cutting whole battalions of men and elves into so many piles of flesh. When riders bring back news of Fingolfin being felled by Grond, then the death blow by its master’s great boot sundering her brother’s body, Lalwen weeps for want of her home and her mother.

viii. Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Lalwen will one day recount the horrors to her lord and to him alone of what happened on that plain. Her lament was long and low as yet another bow and countless kin were shattered on the field. Nerwen confesses to her that Lalwen’s right eye will never quite recover, even after the bandages are unwrapped and the she-elf squints in the low light of the hall of healing in Mithlond.

ix. After such a war, she can barely bring herself to move from Lindon and what is left of the east of Beleriand. The rest of it succumbs to the sea. Her forests have found a goodly grave beneath the surf with Ulmo, and for that she weeps in relief.

She packs light and finds a fleet horse in Lindon, biding Nerwen farewell. She’s had enough death and dragons and dark lords to last her an eternity.

x. Lalwen hears tell at the table of Mithlond before her departure of an elf called Oropher, a Sindar of Doriath, having moved his household over Ered Luin to set up capital in Amon Lanc to rule the Silvan elves of Nandorin descent. She turns her eyes back to her dinner.

xi. She ranges for centuries in this new land beyond Ered Luin before her curiosity gets the better of her. Lalwen rides for Amon Lanc to see this elf-prince of Oropher who is said to be unmatched in prowess. By the time she rides into Amon Lanc, she is on her third horse called Doron for lack of anything better to call them by and dressed like a beggar rather than a daughter of Finwë.

xii. There’s quite the stir in the courtyard of Amon Lanc when Thranduil arrives, fresh from the hunt. There stands a lady by a big blood bay, her hair shining in waves down her back as she speaks silvery and fluid Sindarin with his father’s guard-captain. She’s dressed as a warrior in jerkin and breeks, wrist-guards well worn from use and a longbow of yew unstrung across her shoulders.

When she turns her gaze on Thranduil, the world truly does lie still for a while.

xiii. Her name is Lalwen. She puts him on his back, this warrior elf of old that faced down the first evil’s forces with her brothers, crossed the icy Helcaraxë and can claim descent as the last daughter of Finwë and Indis. Lalwen, who has made a fool out of him before his father and all his court. Her name is Lalwen and she took one measured look at him after his issued challenge and utterly beat him around the yard with her swords before his father and his vassals, and he cannot stop smiling senseless and stupid.

Her name is Lalwen and her eyes are starlight.

xiv. She doesn’t quite reckon how Thranduil makes her laugh. It’s a sound rarely heard out of her, long since silent since her father’s death and all that followed. Centuries without joy begin to chip away.

xv. Lalwen is away for a time in Ost-in-Edhil, for want of her brother-daughter. Now called Galadriel, she rules radiant by Celeborn in this new realm of the Noldor known as Eregion. They are friendly with these dwarves of Moria, and both sides flourish in trade and friendship.

It is there that Nerwen, now Galadriel, turns her eyes on one passing by them during the busy milling in the markets of the capital. Lalwen catches sight of the tall, darkly robed elf lord joining the Noldor smiths near the forges — Galadriel’s pace does not falter.

“His name is Annatar, and he brings many gifts,” is all that her brother-daughter will tell her. Lalwen cannot shake the feeling that Galadriel knows more than is comfortable for her.

xvi. They’re wed under the stars in the fashion of their people. It is a simple affair and Thranduil crowns her a princess with a garland of silvered flowers that show their faces only under moonlight. The feasting goes on for hours — Lalwen giggles after becoming wine-soaked for the first time in living memory on this continent.

They careen out of the halls of Amon Lanc like silly children, the house of his father still loud and bright with their wedding feast. They find a bench hidden amongst the great bowers of wisteria in the gardens so her husband might follow the trail of one white cabochon-like droplet of wine she’s spilt past the fabric of her gown with his mouth without half the court watching.

xvii. He is haltingly gentle at first. Then her nails scourge his back and remind him that this is no glass-like Vanyar maid that might weep at the first touch. This is one of the Noldor beneath him, one of the few that crossed the plains of Helcaraxë and made war upon the first evil before it was thrust through the Door of Night.

She hitches up the yards of samite comprising her bridal gown, ripping it free of her form and tearing the ornaments from her shining hair. Thranduil tries hard to not spill himself too quickly like some callow boy as his wife puts him onto his back and fucks him with all the furor of one gone mad.

xviii. “We are not moving from here,” Lalwen says, her chin set in such a stubborn way that Thranduil knows that this will be their home for all their years to come. They’ve finally settled in Eryn Lasglen, and his father is long dead and submerged under the Dead Marshes with much of his host.

Lalwen faltered at the call to rally and march south to face the lesser evil of Sauron. The War of Wrath still woke his wife in her sleep, screaming. He could not begrudge her the peace she found in their Greenwood if she chose to stay behind and defend their holdings with the wardens. She tied a favor on his arm and wished him a quick return.

When he came back with what was left of their host, Lalwen was the first one waiting at the forest’s edge. She took him home to the realm they’ve carved into the rock and running streams, mending what she could of his mangled face.

“Between the two of us, we could be a whole elf with good sight. Dragon fire is such a pesk,” she teases, her own eye stricken by her last battle in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and concealed by illusions. His wife kisses the ruined flesh of his face as he vanishes it beneath his own spells, content to let their wounds be unseen amongst anyone but each other.

xix. Much later, when he is ready to tell her, she hears the news of what the Last Alliance of Elves and Men has wrought. Gil-galad, a noble son of her house, perished on the slopes of Mount Doom. The ring of power is lost, and her Noldor kin retreat into the west. It marks the end of her people in Middle-earth save for the scattered remnants of the bloodline like Nerwen, now called the Lady of Lorien by all and named Galadriel by her husband, or the strong son of Fingolfin’s descent, Elrond.

The House of Finwë is wasted by the march of time and war. Lalwen thinks of the numbered dead and clutches a hand over her heart, quickly beating within her breast. Thranduil can barely turn his eyes south for fear of bringing back the memory of the marsh-land grave of their shattered host and his father. War brings pain upon them both, but each is selfish enough to have the other to shoulder the burden in this struggle.

xx. “That beast has lived an unnaturally long life,” chimes his wife. This being said after the great elk had cribbed all but the highest of the varnished wood in the cavernous stables of the Woodland Realm.

Oropher’s beast, likewise in size, had given them the tradition of hewing their great horns from their elegant skulls long after nature had moldered the body down to naught but bleached bones.

It is Lalwen’s job to help her husband arrange the horns of his dead beasts in such a way that the throne is festooned with them after the tenth elk passes from old age.

She calls the throne of the Woodland Realm a busy sight and can barely contain her laughter whenever she passes it by.

xxi. He fashions for her a crown at the start of each season, and tries in vain to fashion for her a throne. She mirrors him and takes the flowering buds for her spring crown, the green leaves for her summer diadem, the russet fronds and berries for her autumn cornet, and the elegant circlet of holly for the winter as he does.

Any attempts at making a space for her in the throne room are shunned by her. She simply occupies his own throne when she has business to attend in the state-fashion. When he occupies it on his own business or calls her for a matter that requires them both, she simply sits the stairs leading up to it.

When word travels that the King and Queen of the Woodland Realm reign harmonious and unparalleled to any other pair in the kingdom they’ve fashioned for themselves, most are surprised to hear it’s the _queen_ that has been seen on some occasions shooing her husband from the throne to take a matter into her own hands.

Then again, those that know the pair aren’t as surprised.

xxii. Doron has long since succumbed to the theme upon which his race has been sung. Lalwen sung him to his rest beneath a great, sprawling oak and covered his body with ivy. It is a good rest.

xxiii. Since their first night, and for all the nights that follow, Lalwen never forgets the taste of her husband’s skin between her teeth as he breaks apart under her. It’s on nights like this, when she takes him between her thighs and he marks her skin with his nails and mouth, that she fancies he first got a son on her.

xxiv. He braids her hair back on her first morning of sickness and for all other mornings that follow. The nights of winter are long and lazy ones, where she wakes to the stirring of water in the caverns near their bedchamber. She fashions for him his winter-crown in the forges, a delicate twist of mithril. He keeps it on all season.

xxv. Thranduil wakens in their bed to the sounds of the snowmelt quickening the waters of the streams that run through the limestone of their home. Lalwen stirs, still on the edge of dreaming by the sound of her soft sighs and moans.

He buries his face in the tangle of her hair, wild and snared as it is with sleep. She clutches the curled arm around her and twists against him, and Thranduil is suddenly aware of how very awake his wife is when she guides his hand down to the hot juncture of her thighs.

He finds her slick and hot and — can’t quite finish the thought before she has him in hand and urging him into the tight clasp of heat and wet and _Valar help him_. All his breath rushes out, and he’s left to rock with her, one hand angling up a long thigh while the other is caught against the soft swell of her belly where their son sleeps.

xxvi. When her son slips into her world that summer, Lalwen is struck dumb and silent for the longest time. When the midwives deposit the slick and screaming thing at her breast, she’s bereft of words. Tears trace her face as she summons up the strength to hold him to her and try to smooth down the licks of fine, downy silver crowning his head. They’re still connected, the afterbirth not yet passed, and a goodwife makes quick work of the pulsing cord with twine and a keen knife.

Thranduil is at her side the entire time. On the tiny thing’s tenth pass of breathing Manwë's air for the first time outside of the safe catch of her body, she passes him to her lord and watches. He is as stricken as her, if not doubly so, at the tiny creature they’ve kindled.

They name him Legolas in the Silvan fashion.

xxvii. Motherhood is a wonder that she wishes she’d started sooner.

xxviii. “I’ve seen more ruin over rocks than over any other thing in creation,” his wife says to him one night. He’s sifting through her cask of white gems like starlight, ones she’s hewn from the rocks of the Greenwood with her own Noldor craft. They still need refinement to become truly wearable, but she has left them idle for nearly a millennia.

“Let me send them off — you’ve not had a proper crown to this day, and I’d be considered a poor lord to leave his lady without her raiment save for leaves and flowers,” this said while brushing back her hair into braids that only he could weave. Legolas is practically snoring on her lap, a book of lore from which his wife was spinning tales for their son his pillow. Lalwen reaches back to still Thranduil’s work, turning to him.

“Your wealth as a ruler isn’t measured by the treasure you hoard or the gems you drape your lady with like the elvish kings of our first age overwrought their reign in, husband — it was all worth dirt in the measure of time.”

They do not speak on the gems for as long as Lalwen lives, and for ages the cask sits forgotten in their rooms. She’s happier with the crowns of flowers and twigs and ivy that he makes for her.

xxix. A threat grows on the borders of their realm, where Durin was first woken after the awakening of their people. Mount Gundabad teems with orcs under the command of the servants of Sauron, the lesser evil.

Lalwen, for once, takes a leaf out of her husband’s book and persistently ignores the issue. She is too wrapped up in Legolas growing. Too fearful she is of missing a moment of it that the world outside the Woodland Realm seems an afterthought, barely passed over in the moments she might spend thinking on it during waking and dreaming.

xxx. She gets her husband out of his fine brocade and samite on a special occasion the spring before she dies. They’re both in hunting leathers when they set out for a fortnight in the Greenwood with Legolas, who is nearing ten summers old, and it is numbered among the happiest days of her life.

“ _NANA_! LOOK!” hollers her son, holding aloft the first finely fletched arrow of the trip. The crane feathers they’d found along the shores of the Long Lake are a lovely white against the yew wood. She takes her knife to them and strips a few stragglers off the edge to give it more keen wind in flight, presenting it to her son.

Lalwen lays down amidst the tall grass of the shore, Erebor looming off in the distance. Legolas is a consummate good shot at this age, and she makes him run through his drills while she dozes to the _whirr_ and _shikkk_ of his arrows lodging themselves into the trees of choice.

Soon Thranduil’s tall boots are blocking her vision. She makes a grab for one and gives it a firm tug to make her wishes known, and soon he folds his legs to make a fine cushion for her to prop her head on.

Legolas goes on puttering by the lakeshore, bringing them back all manner of things that he can’t find at home. A piece of quartz, one that she tucks away in her jerkin for her collection she’s made out of the gems he brings her. A blue kingfisher feather for Thranduil’s hair.

At night, they bed down high up in the trees and teach him the lay of the stars overhead. Lalwen is better with tales of the Valar than her husband might claim to be and takes up his instruction of the histories better than any tutor found east of Mithlond.

xxxi. All smiles stop when scouts on the northern patrols fall to Gundabad wargs and Gundabad arrows. Lalwen takes up her armor and a score of their best. Before they leave, she goes to Legolas in his bower.

The little boy is swallowed in his bedclothes, his hair brushing past his shoulders in growth now — he numbers ten summers this week. Lalwen tucks the bedclothes higher over his shoulders and presses kisses to his cheek, breathing in the sweet smell of his skin and hair. She tears herself away from him with a great summoning of will and goes to bid Thranduil farewell for now.

xxxii. She was too foolish and cocksure of her own abilities to notice the black speech of the Orcs heralding her death. The arrows strike quick and true, taking her in the throat. She lingers, and her people carry her as far as home. Lalwen chokes on her own last wishes as Thranduil holds her, the dark quickening at the corners of her vision until all fades. She can hear him screaming at her, begging her to hold on, but the sound is distant. Her heart aches for the years she will lose with her lord and the bright boy they’ve kindled into this world.

xxxiii. After they bury her body somewhere secret and safe, Legolas barely sleeps in his old bower. Thranduil wakens to the timid tapping of their son at his chambers, his son tearful and whispering for his _naneth_. Thranduil clutches their son tight and wishes that he’d denied his wife the boon to venture as she did during her hero-age to Gundabad.

This was not worth her pride.

xxxiv. He cannot do this.

For a long time, he cannot bring himself to look into his son’s face without seeing his wife's faint smile mirrored there. He grows into her looks, but has his fairer coloring and not the flax and gold that Lalwen bore in her hair, her skin.

Twice as long, he wonders if he should sail into the west or simply give up, leaving this body behind and joining her spirit in the Gardens of Lorien. But one look at Legolas at his door during the darker nights after her death steels his resolve to linger, if only for their son.

When Legolas reaches his majority and all questions about his mother cease, it is a relief and a curse. Lalwen fades into a faint memory for the Woodland Realm, and for that Thranduil is a coward. Over the centuries after her passing, he has a stone mason carve a likeness of her outside the gates of the kingdom and sends off her gems to the dwarves to be wrought into something worthy of her burial raiment.

xxxv. She wakes in a fever-haze beneath the low-hung bows of some willowy tree in the gardens, clothed in the dark velvet of the spirits. The fountains hum with falling water in the distance. The earth beneath her is Aman, and she has come home.

xxxvi. After the war is done and the line of Durin is entombed, Thranduil finds the white gems of Lasgalen strewn amongst the hoard. They fall short of the Fire Everlasting in his laughing maid’s eyes, no matter their shape. He leaves them with the mountains of cold metal and hard gems, never thinking on the matter again.

xxxvii. The sea calls an elf and his venturing dwarf-friend home after a long war over a ring. Many have already gone westward and many more follow to the shores of the undying.

xxxviii. Nerwen is walking towards her. She knows her by her long stride and white raiments and the echoing shadow of Celeborn following.

The reunion is massive as all her kin flock to a grassy field during the sun’s ebbing and the stars kindling. She sits with Nerwen near her mother and father-wife as they spin and card, watching her father and brothers with those of their descent gambol around on the green.

Lalwen casts her eyes outward from the gardens and waits for more to follow into the lands of the undying.

xxxix. Strangely enough, it’s the faint outline of a dwarf following her son in his long stride up the path to the Gardens of Lorien.

xl. “I think he may or may not,” she says to her son one star-filled night. Gimli is off getting roaring drunk with his ancestors at this hour, leaving the mother and her son to their own devices as they sit beneath Varda’s mantle, called Elbereth by their folk.

“I think he will sail to us, one day,” Legolas confides to her after a long stretch of silence. Lalwen takes her son’s hand in her own and grasps tightly.

xli. Long after that night, another comes. To say say she sprints towards a familiarly tall figure coming up the path to the gardens is a vast understatement. Lalwen, wife to Thranduil-king and daughter of the House of Finwë, _flies_.

xlii. Her tomb is hidden deep within Eryn Lasgalen. There, until the end of all things, remains the little spot of green left in what was once the Greenwood. It is simple as she could have wished for — a weathered rock over her mossy cairn bearing only a simple inscription. Sometimes she dreams of her tomb in the dark of the Mirkwood, and of her body lain within with words written over stone as they are in her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Tengwar above reads 'beloved, mine' in the Sindarin form.


End file.
